Following the recent announcement that What Is Buried Must Remain was selected for the upcoming Soho Horror Film Festival, we caught up with director Elias Matar to spill the beans on this supernatural chiller.
Can you tell us about the processing of crafting What Is Buried Must Remain?
In 2016 I founded a nonprofit called Lighthouse Peace Initiative. We opened a youth center in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon. The mission of the center is to empower refugee youth and young adults to express themselves through theater, painting, music and film. In 2018, while on a photo shoot, we found this amazing house that the locals claimed was haunted. So the process of making the film began.
I came back to the States with this idea of a haunted house but submerged in my Syrian heritage. I originally wrote the screenplay in English with my writing partner Edward E. Romero. Then we translated the screenplay with the help of two of my students Hamza Alzahab and Israa Samman. The process took about three years.
The cast and crew of WHAT IS BURIED MUST REMAIN is primarily made up of these young students and local professional filmmakers.
Due to the uncertainty of their futures, I wanted my students to have equity, a project and a reason to carry on and remain hopeful.
So we made a horror film. (laughing)
Were there any true or fictional stories that you used for reference or research?
Absolutely. The house that served as the primary location was actually built in the 1930s during the French occupation of the region. Further back, during the occupation of the Ottoman in 1860, there was a massacre that led to many mass graves in the area. So those real life elements informed the backdrop of our fiction.
What can you tell us about the filming locations?
Again, the primary shooting location was amazing. Sometimes it felt really eerie to be inside alone. I remember one time it was lunch and the cast and the crew left the set. I was sitting behind my monitor going over the scene, after a few minutes I stopped and looked around and I was alone. I got up and quickly joined the others.
Other locations include the actual homes and refugee camps of the cast and crew. This really helped to ground the characters in as much authenticity as possible.
The other locations were the actual homes and refugee camps of the cast and crew. We wanted to give the film an authentic feel of our characters and where they come from.
How hard is it to execute scares in a horror film?
This film has a slow burn, letting characters discover things at the same time as the audience. The hope is that they will be drawn in, feel claustrophobic and then blam!
How does this project compare to your previous work?
It was certainly more challenging than my other films that were made in the US. It’s an Arab-language horror film, one of only a handful ever made. We shot it completely on location in Lebanon, while the country was suffering through a massive economic meltdown, on top of COVID. Some days it was nearly impossible to get to the set due to riots and protests in the streets. But it felt like a natural growth for me, as a filmmaker, after filming three documentaries about Syrian refugees fleeing to Europe or getting stuck in refugee camps in Lebanon.
How exciting is it to be screening at Soho Horror Film Festival?
I’m stoked. It will be the European premiere of our film. So that’s super cool.
What Is Buried Must Remain will screen at Soho Horror Film Festival 2022.
Bloody Flicks 